Abstract
Physiology can underlie movement, including short-term activity, exploration of unfamiliar environments, and larger scale dispersal, and thereby influence species distributions in an environmentally sensitive manner. We conducted meta-analyses of the literature to establish, firstly, whether physiological traits underlie activity, exploration, and dispersal by individuals (88 studies), and secondly whether physiological characteristics differed between range core and edges of distributions (43 studies). We show that locomotor performance and metabolism influenced individual movement with varying levels of confidence. Range edges differed from cores in traits that may be associated with dispersal success, including metabolism, locomotor performance, corticosterone levels, and immunity, and differences increased with increasing time since separation. Physiological effects were particularly pronounced in birds and amphibians, but taxon-specific differences may reflect biased sampling in the literature, which also focussed primarily on North America, Europe, and Australia. Hence, physiology can influence movement, but undersampling and bias currently limits general conclusions.
Highlights
Physiology can underlie movement, including short-term activity, exploration of unfamiliar environments, and larger scale dispersal, and thereby influence species distributions in an environmentally sensitive manner
Physiology was positively associated with movement there was some overlap of the 95% credible intervals with zero (Supplementary Table S3); note that credible intervals are the Bayesian equivalent of confidence intervals, and are interpreted in the same way
There was no strong effect of thermal strategy, sex, age and sampling origin (Supplementary Table S3), and there was no evidence of sampling and publication bias (Supplementary Table S3)
Summary
Physiology can underlie movement, including short-term activity, exploration of unfamiliar environments, and larger scale dispersal, and thereby influence species distributions in an environmentally sensitive manner. Dispersal within meta-populations determines rates of gene flow between individual populations and influences genetic variation and adaptation to different environments[3]. Changing environmental conditions, such as changes in temperature, may cause unfavourable conditions in the original habitat and stimulate individuals to search for more favourable conditions These dynamics may be influenced by environmental conditions experienced by previous generations and at early life history stages[10,11]. In the spider Cyrtophora citricola, the early natal environment influenced the dispersal behaviour of offspring[14] Individuals vary in their tendency to initiate movement because each receives somewhat different information from the environment, and the speed and distance moved may depend on the physiological capacity of individuals[8,15]. Not all individuals in a population are likely to disperse[16]
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